Charles 𝄢 Hutchins#EqualTemperament, #JustIntonation, #microtonality and #SpectralTuning (the thing William sethares invented) are all good topics in a class on #psychoacoustics? I really want computer musicians to think about tuning more and I might get to teach this topic next year. I feel like it goes well with taking about how people perceive consonance and dissonance.
Sevish@celesteh Have you been using alternative tunings in your music since switching to Linux? If so, any advice?
@sevish I use #SuperCollider, which has built-in support for scales and tunings via the Scale class and Tuning class. The #TuningLib add-on (which, disclaimer: I co-wrote) has some additional support for key changes, opening scala files and some odds and sods.
I also very occasionally use the Java Just Intonation Calculator which is not brilliant, but I was/(am?) the maintainer for it, so I know how to use it. #JJICalc
I don't tend to mess around with floating point MIDI, but it should be possible, I think? My MIDI-> CV converter is hella old, so only deals with integer note values. I keep meaning to do something with an arduino instead, but never get around to it.
This probably isn't terribly helpful. What kind of music do you do?
I also very occasionally use the Java Just Intonation Calculator which is not brilliant, but I was/(am?) the maintainer for it, so I know how to use it. #JJICalc
I don't tend to mess around with floating point MIDI, but it should be possible, I think? My MIDI-> CV converter is hella old, so only deals with integer note values. I keep meaning to do something with an arduino instead, but never get around to it.
This probably isn't terribly helpful. What kind of music do you do?
@celesteh It's good to know how others are getting at those microtones. Yes my approach is a bit different, I'm working with Ableton + VSTs. Ableton has no support for microtonality so I use plugins which provide that support. I'm writing oddball electronic dance music that probably sounds better on an armchair than in a club, and everything 100% microtonal. So far I've been on Windows but I'm moving to Linux and hope I can continue with the DAW+plugins paradigm.
@sevish I don't know if this is helpful, but I was just looking for the website for scala, and it can apparently write pitchbends into midi files to make them work with non-microtone DAWs. I don't have much experience with scala aside from their amazing scale archive, but this does sound nifty.
@celesteh Scala is great, I've been using it for a number of years. But it's better to use instruments with built-in support for microtuning. MIDI retuning limits you to 1-voice-per-channel polyphony, because it uses pitch bend which is per-channel monophonic. And nothing kills your CPU like having 16 instances of the same synth patch just to play polyphonic microtonal music with MIDI!